AHSAA football championship to be played at Protective stadium in 2021

Alabama’s high school football championship games are returning to the Magic City.

The Alabama High School Athletic Association football championships, known as the Super 7, will be played at Protective Stadium in 2021, the beginning of a contract that will put the seven title games in Birmingham on a three-year rotation with Tuscaloosa’s Bryant-Denny Stadium and Jordan-Hare Stadium in Auburn.

After 2021, the title games will be played in Birmingham in 2024, 2027, and 2030, in an agreement with the AHSAA. The city and the Birmingham Convention and Visitors Bureau will pay a combined $200,000 each year for the right to host the games, Mayor Randall Woodfin informed City Council members in an email on Wednesday. (Birmingham will contribute $125,000, the mayor said; CVB will pay $75,000).

“One of the driving factors for winning this bid was your support of the new stadium construction and BJCC renovation proposal,” the mayor told Councilors. “Event managers all across the nation are taking a new look at Birmingham because of our investments, and when large events are available for bid--we are back in the game!”

The $174 million, 45,000-seat stadium is scheduled to open in Fall 2021. Construction bid information, requirements and specifications are not available from the BJCC. Bids must be received for public opening on Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2019, at 2 p.m. in the BJCC Board Room.

Woodfin says revenues produced by the Super 7 and other events at the stadium and BJCC will be directed to the Neighborhood Revitalization Fund.

The AHSAA championship games were last played in Birmingham in 2008, ending a 12-year run at Legion Field. Birmingham hosted the AHSAA championship game for the staet’s largest classification in the 1970s through 1995 while the title games in smaller classifications were played at home sites.

In 1996, the AHSAA created the Super 6, which put all championship football games at a central site -- Legion Field -- for the first time. In 2009, the title games moved to the campuses of Alabama and Auburn on an alternating, every-other-year basis.

In 2014, the AHSAA created a seventh classification and the Super 6 became the Super 7 and expanded to three days instead of two.

In the three-city rotation, Alabama and Auburn will have the Super 7 in years it does not have the Iron Bowl.

The AHSAA confirmed that the titles games will be in Birmingham this afternoon and said in a news releases that the games will be in Auburn in 2022, 2026, 2028 and 2032 and in Tuscaloosa in 2023, 2025, 2029, and 2031.

“It is with great pride that we announce the continuation of Super 7 for 2021-2032 and our partnership with the communities of Auburn-Opelika, Tuscaloosa, and now Birmingham,” AHSAA’s Executive Director Steve Savarese said in the news release. “The communities of Auburn-Opelika and Tuscaloosa helped the AHSAA take this event to a new level in 2009 and created the standard of excellence for hosting that is unmatched across high school athletics. The AHSAA is grateful for Auburn-Opelika and Tuscaloosa embracing a new idea to include Birmingham in the rotation which will now provide three high quality venues for our member schools to showcase their football programs at the end of each season.”

Josh Bean contributed to this report.

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